nevada_scout

I've maintained a Duolingo streak for one thousand, one hundred days.

That's three years and five days (not counting streak freezes) where I've completed a Polish lesson on Duolingo. Every day, Duolingo would remind me to complete a lesson to maintain my streak, and every day I duly complied. Doing a lesson every day for so long feels like quite an accomplishment, but I wasn't making any real progress. Looking back its now obvious why.

It's easy to game the system. The streak is maintained by completing a lesson -- any lesson of your choice. So you can repeat the first, and easiest lesson simply for the purpose of maintaining the streak. It takes literally seconds to do but it's just busy work that doesn't help you learn the language. It only makes you feel good about keeping up the streak.

As I passed the milestones - six months, a year, two years, three years - my partner would say she was proud of me. But it didn't feel earned, rather it made me feel guilty.

I'm replacing Duolingo with one-to-one tutoring (with my Polish partner), exercise books, and YouTube lessons which I am trying to do every day. I'm not tracking my streak yet, but maybe I should be...